Expertise
We have helped hundreds of families whose child has been impacted by a birth injury.
Having a baby is an exciting time, an event that should be filled with great joy. Every expectant parent has dreams of a life full of accomplishment and happiness for their child. While most children are born healthy, a small number of newborns suffer injury at or near the time of birth. These traumatic birth events are devastating for every parent. Once the initial shock has started to wear off, most parents want to know what happened to their baby. Questions arise about why their baby was injured, and whether the injury could have and should have been prevented. This is the time to turn to a Birth Injury Lawyer for help. Finding the answers to these questions can be difficult. An experienced Birth Injury Lawyer can help answer these questions for parents. As personal injury lawyers with considerable experience in Birth Injury cases, we are here to help. If you have any questions about medical negligence leading to a Birth Injury, we may be able to help you find the answers.
What are birth injuries?
Most Birth Injuries are related to a disruption in blood flow to the baby’s brain, although other forms of trauma also occur at or around the time of birth. Injury to the baby’s brain from impaired blood flow to the brain can occur before labour, during labour and delivery, or shortly after birth. If severe enough, the impaired flow of oxygen can cause permanent injury to the baby’s brain, resulting in a diagnosis of Cerebral Palsy. Unfortunately, Cerebral Palsy is a permanent injury to the brain that often results in severe motor dysfunction, cognitive impairment and developmental delays. It can also affect vision and hearing and can often cause seizures. Cerebral Palsy resulting from birth trauma will have a dramatic impact on many aspects of their lives. They will have need for care, therapies and surgical interventions, often for life.
Other injuries from physical trauma can also occur, most notably from shoulder dystocia, resulting in injury to the nerves in the neck, shoulder and arm. Other forms of Birth Trauma are described below.
Types of birth injuries
Some examples of birth injuries would include:
- Fetal & Neonatal Stroke
- Hypoglycemia leading to brain damage
Nursing Errors
Nurses are a critical component of our healthcare system. They are physicians’ eyes and ears. They conduct frequent assessments and provide necessary care to patients.
Nurses provide much of the day-to-day care for hospital patients, long-term care facility residents, home care recipients and visitors to other medical offices. Nurses hold great responsibility across the health care sector and their errors can cause serious harm to patients, permanent disability and even death. If a nurse breaches standards of care due to negligence and a patient suffers an injury as a result, it’s called medical malpractice. And, the nurse may be liable for damages.
If a nurse has been negligent in your care, or the care of a family member, you have every right to seek justice for the harm they have caused. Gluckstein Lawyers have the knowledge, experience and skill to help you make a claim for compensation for damages caused by a nursing error.
Types of nurses in Ontario.
There are three types of nursing positions in Ontario: Registered Nurses (RNs), Nurse Practitioners (NPs) and Registered Practical Nurses (RPNs).
New RNs must have a baccalaureate degree from a collaborative college-university nursing program or a four-year university nursing program. With this comprehensive education, RNs are able to offer care for patients with more complex needs in unpredictable situations. NPs are RNs with advanced university education who specialize in primary health care, adult and pediatric care and anaesthesia. RPNs must earn a two-year diploma in Practical Nursing in a college program. RPNs tend to work with patients with less complex needs or with stable and predictable conditions.
Standards of practice for nurses.
Nurses are trained professionals. They are expected to provide care at a level similar to the care provided by other nursing professionals in similar situations, with similar training. Each type of nurse is trained to perform tasks at varying levels of patient care. In addition to providing care within their training and experience, all nurses must follow standards of practice produced by the College of Nurses of Ontario and institutions in which they serve.
Nurses serve many important functions. They are responsible for providing day to day care, monitoring and tracking patients’ conditions, advocating for patients, administering medications and other treatments, and finally, responding to and altering allied care providers to changes in the patient’s condition. Importantly, nurses are expected to understand the patient population they are treating. They must know what changes in a patient condition mean so that they are able to respond and escalate care appropriately.
Common nursing errors.
There are many types of errors a nurse can make during their shift; however, several errors tend to happen more frequently and often lead to more severe outcomes for patients.
medication errors - if a nurse improperly administers medication to a patient, serious adverse events are possible. Common medication errors include the wrong dose, wrong patient, wrong medication, wrong site of delivery, and/or wrong time to medicate.
fall prevention - older people or patients with certain conditions such as vertigo or neurological impairments are at a greater risk for falls, but any patient could suffer from a preventable fall if their needs are not met and they attempt to get out of a hospital bed when otherwise unable. If a nurse fails to make timely rounds, fails to understand and assess a patient’s mobility, or fails to understand the effects of certain medications, they may cause or contribute to a preventable injury from a fall.
documentation errors - if a nurse is keeping inadequate documentation of a patient’s condition and interventions or treatments (for example, administering medications), they may cause or contribute to another practitioner making an error when providing care, prevent a patient from receiving necessary changes in treatment, or record incorrect information which could affect a patient’s care.
Failing to report changes in patient condition - as mentioned above this piece of nursing care is critical. Nurses must monitor their patients appropriately but they must also know when to get other health professionals involved. This is particularly true when a patient’s condition changes.
Failure to monitor - frequency and adequacy of monitoring are important. Nurses play a key role in ‘early warning systems’. Appropriate monitoring can often catch complications or changes in a patient’s condition.
Obstetrical errors - nurses are often key people in providing obstetrical care. They monitor mother and baby throughout most of the active phase of labour. Failures in frequency of monitoring or with interpretation of the fetal heart monitoring strip can lead to devastating consequences.
Discovering a nursing error.
Some nursing errors will be obvious immediately, others may not be evident for hours or days. If you or a loved one has experienced an adverse outcome following medical care, especially if the prognosis was good, it is advisable to investigate whether its cause was something that could have and should have been avoided. You can begin this process by contacting a personal injury lawyer with experience in nursing error cases. At Gluckstein Lawyers, we draw on our expansive in house experience and network of medical experts to carefully review a patient’s records for any indication that a breach in the standard of care occurred.
Identifying a breach is only one part of a nursing error medical malpractice case. In addition, a plaintiff must establish that the breach of the nurse directly caused or contributed to harming the patient. The harm must have caused damages to the patient beyond what they would have suffered due to their normal course of illness or injury.
Nursing error medical malpractice cases are rarely straight-forward and are often quite complex. Choosing the right legal representative and advocate to assist you in making a claim and advancing your interests in a case is one of the most consequential decisions a victim of a nursing error can make.
We’re here to help.
Gluckstein Lawyers have helped people just like you as they took steps to rebuild their lives following a devastating event. As one of the country’s top ranked personal injury firms, we are respected by our peers and we have earned a reputation among our clients for getting results as we take on even the most difficult and complex files.
When you contact our office for a no cost, no obligation initial consultation, you can be confident you will be received with empathetic, compassionate and attentive care. After you explain what has happened, we will take all the time you need to inform you of your rights, discuss your options, and help in any way we can.
If your case is actionable and we believe our lawyers can successfully negotiate a fair settlement for you or win a court-ordered award, we will offer to represent you in your legal proceedings. Our confidence in our ability to build strong and persuasive cases means we will never ask for payment for legal services unless we are successful in accessing funds that compensate you for injury.
Full-circle care.
There are many personal injury lawyers you can choose to work with on your case. But as our past clients will tell you, Gluckstein’s commitment to providing full-circle care sets us apart. We treat our clients as we would treat our own family, and that means caring about your well-being beyond the time we are actively working on your case.
When you entrust your case to us, our renowned client liaisons will be available to help you understand the process and to connect you with resources that may help your recovery. Some of these liaisons have experienced their own personal injuries and are uniquely able to understand what you may be thinking and empathize with what you may be feeling. Knowing that you have a trusted and effective team supporting you can make all the difference as you take steps to build back your best life after a terrible event.
If you or a loved one believes you may have suffered serious harm from a nursing error, trust Gluckstein Lawyers to be your tireless advocates. Together, we can work to get what you need and deserve to move confidently into the future.
What our birth trauma lawyers can do
If you think your child or grandchild has suffered a Birth Injury that might have been preventable, we can help make that determination. We start by meeting with you to get the facts. We then obtain all the relevant medical records and perform a detailed and comprehensive review. Where indicated, we will consult with highly qualified, respected and independent doctors to get the answers you need and deserve.
Consultation
There is no fee charged for your initial consultation about your Birth Trauma case. In our first meeting, we will carefully discuss the relevant obstetrical history as well as the circumstances surrounding labour and delivery. We will obtain the antenatal records, the labour and delivery records, the fetal heart tracings and the newborn records, at no cost to you. Following our careful analysis of those records, we will again meet with you to discuss our findings and move your case in the right direction, again at no cost to you.
Investigation
If concerns are identified, following our review of your Birth Trauma case and our meeting with you to discuss the records and issues, we will consult with highly trained medical experts. We seek support from these medical experts to demonstrate that the health care provided did not lead up to reasonable expectations – called a breach of the standard of care. We also seek medical support to prove that the failure to provide proper medical care resulted in your child’s Birth Injury – called “causation”. Once we have the required expert support to establish your case, we can proceed with a birth injury claim for compensation for your child and your family.
Building the case
The goal of a Birth Trauma medical malpractice claim is to get your child and your family the justice and compensation you deserve for an injury that should have been avoided. The economic and emotional burden of caring for a child injured by Birth Trauma is enormous. All affected families are in need of substantial assistance. Your Birth Trauma Lawyer must ensure all the required steps are taken to get the compensation you deserve. These cases are complex and usually take many years to prosecute. Due to the complexity of these cases, it is important that you select a Birth Trauma lawyer with both experience and credentials
Contact a birth injury lawyer today
If you and your family have been affected by Birth Trauma, Gluckstein Lawyers can help you. We have a team which includes lawyers, clerks and a client liaison who herself has experienced the entire process of a birth trauma case. Our birth injury lawyers in Toronto, Ottawa, and Niagara, Ontario have vast experience in these cases and will tirelessly advocate for your child and your family.
Contact us for a free consultation today.
How long do I have to file a lawsuit if I suspect my child has sustained a birth injury or perinatal injury?
Typically, in Ontario, you have two years from the day which the injury occurred, or the day you discovered that the injury had occurred, to bring a lawsuit or file a claim relating to the personal injury. In the case of a birth or perinatal injury, the limitation period does not start until the child reaches the age of majority, which in Ontario is 18 years old. The limitation period can be delayed even further if, when the child reaches the age of majority, he or she remains legally “incapable” of commencing litigation because of a physical, mental, or psychological condition. In this case, the limitation period does not begin to run until a Litigation Guardian is appointed for the purposes of the lawsuit.
It is best to contact a lawyer early to ensure that proper steps are taken and that deadlines are not missed. You do not have to retain a lawyer right away, but it can be helpful to learn about your legal rights early.
How will I find out what happened to my child?
Our lawyers will use a combination of resources to determine what happened in the context of a birth or perinatal injury. We will start the investigative process by obtaining the medical records and by gathering information from our clients. We will then seek out the most appropriate medical and non-medical experts to interpret and provide opinions and expertise as to whether there was a breach of the standard of care, whether that breach caused the injuries suffered, and the extent of the injuries suffered. Throughout the litigation process, we will receive further evidence as to what happened through the exchange of documents between parties and through the Examination for Discovery process.
What will legal action cost? What will I have to pay?
Generally, there are no costs to our clients throughout the course of litigation. Our firm carries the cost of litigation and any disbursements. When your matter is resolved either through settlement or at trial, our firm will take a portion of the settlement for our fees and disbursements. Our lawyers will explain the retainer and fee arrangements clearly at the initial consultation.